On Nov. 12, Lan Fusheng, vice-president of the group company delivered a theme speech named Welcome Winter and Look for more overseas investment Opportunities on the Chinese Mining overseas mining investment forum of the 2008 China International Mining Congress. Mr. Lan pointed out: “ Slump mining market can bring more opportunities to the mining corporations like Zijin.”
Mr.Lan said that world financial crisis had initially led a sluggish period for global mining market causing profits falling at a large margin or loss. Zijin Mining was also influenced to a certain extent. However, owning to most mining projects at home were purchased before 2004 when the mining was just at its initial stage, the cost was low. At the same time, Zijin Company boasted a low-cost operation for its production and management, so it enjoyed very high marginal profit rate with strong market risk resistance capacity. The overseas projects invested these years, owing to minor investment and acquisition cost, could not bring loss for a changed market.
Mr. Lan said with an analysis that Zijin Company had just completed its IPO in the first half year, which boasted rich cash with less than 30% asset-liability ratio. Furthermore, the company had built good collaboration with commercial banks and financing for projects was very easy. From now on, the low-cost operation advantage would prove the company for its overseas acquisition.
Mr. Lan also introduced the overseas investment of Zijin Mining, insistent principals for the investment and some problems needed to be noticed for overseas investment.The forum was chaired by Wang Binghui, General Manager of the Mineral Resources Department of China Minmetals Corporation （Minmetals），and Thys Terblanche, Global Director of the Mining &Technology Department of Standard Bank. The directors from Northwest Geological Exploration and Mining Bureau for Nonferrous metals (NWME), O, Silvercorp Metals Inc. and China Metallurgical Group Corp. (MCC) shared the overseas investment experiences of Chinese enterprises and introduced their decision making, operation and procedures for overseas mining investment, perambulation and exploitation one after another.